2011 Employment Experience of Youths: Results from a Longitudinal Survey — 2011-02-09

At age 23, there is a clear gender gap in educational attainment. While nearly 1 in 4 women had earned a bachelor�s degree by the October when they were age 23, only 1 in 7 men had done so, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics re- ported today. Additionally, the same percentage of men and women, 16 percent, were enrolled in college at age 23, so it is unlikely the gap in educational attainment will close in the next few years. These findings are from the first 12 annual rounds of the National Longi- tudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which is a nationally representative survey of about 9,000 young men and women who were born during the years 1980 to 1984. These respondents were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997 and ages 23 to 29 when interviewed for the 12th time in the 2008-09 survey round.